My detractors behind fake rice rumour in Ogun, says Amosun

Ogun State governor, Ibikunle Amosun, yesterday said those behind the Ogun State fake rice rumour are political detractors. He described the situation as sad and deliberate attempts to de-market the state for selfish reasons. He was reacting to reports on social media alleging that his administration mounted sandbags with few bags of rice as rice pyramid to deceive the people.

The report had claimed that the Mitros rice was not available in any shop in Ogun State, and no rice farm anywhere nor factory where the rice is being bagged in the state. The governor, who spoke through the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Chief Dayo Adeneye, at the opening session of the 2018 Media Workshop of the State House Press Corps in Abeokuta with the theme: “The Role of the Media in Peace Building: 2019 in Perspective”, said that it was wrong for anybody to deliberately run down the state.

While assuring of government’s commitment to the rice project, he said the harvest this year will surpass that of last year as the farmers now know that the government, serving as off takers, will buy whatever they produce and sell at N11,000 to the public. “I’m just urging our colleagues; we were able to take you round and you saw for yourselves what obtains, you saw the processes, the farms, you saw the farmers, you saw how grateful they were to this administration for empowering them.

“They were also grateful to the federal government’s programme IFAD, FADAMA for empowering them and helping them to achieve what they have been able to achieve with MITROS RICE. You also saw the processing plant, the rice mill, the bagging process and all that. Some people are just being mischievous because we are approaching election year and they are trying to score cheap political points.

“The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Chairman of the Presidential Task force on Agriculture came to verify things for themselves. Rather than encouraging this administration to do more, some political detractors think they can score cheap political points by de-marketing this state and publishing false and fake stories about MITROS RICE,” he said

The guest lecturers at the workshop were Dr. Wale Aderemi, a Senior Lecturer at the Lagos State University (LASU) and Dr. Abubakar Kari, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology, University of Abuja.